March 18, 2018

There's a bunch of crud in my life that feels unbloggable right now. It's the reason I disappeared for a while last month -- didn't feel quite honest writing about my life without talking about it, didn't feel quite right blogging about it. I was thinking that blogging daily during March would be a way to focus on other things, but it still feels like I'm writing around the topics that are really on my mind.

This is a predictably hard time of year. One of the three active substance abusers in my orbit always does some version of "work on substance abuse" for Lent, and it always leaves me feeling squashed and hopeless about now. (Oh, you guys, I want so badly to be snarky about this person's choices. I am so weary of this situation. MOVING ON and DECLINING to be snarky even though this person richly deserves some snark and perhaps some arson.)

A couple of big kid situations are weighing on me as well, but those are not really my stories to tell. Jody has commented about this before -- the difficulties of sharing the experience of mothering teens without sharing too much of the teen's experience -- and it's weighing on me. If you have ever thought to yourself, "Gosh, Jamie writes so confidently about parenting that I wonder if she ever feels like a human casserole of failure and incompetence," the answer is yes. Sometimes (today, in fact!) that's exactly how it feels.

March 16, 2018

Today is the midpoint in my self-imposed March blogging challenge: 15 posts written before today, 15 more to go after this one. I was doing a bit of digging in the drafts folder to see if I could unearth any inspiration. It's like an archeological dig in there, man.

Top layer: things that need more research or that strike me as potentially pretentious

Middle layer: maybe I should take this down in case the extended family member described herein remembers that I have a blog

Further still: rubbly pile of question marks and mystery

One post is called "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Or, you know, not." I saw that one and thought, "Oh, Tennyson! I love that poem! Wonder what I was writing about that day?" Nothing, apparently-- I didn't save any text at all, just the title. What would I have been thinking about drinking life to the lees? I suppose I'll never know. There's one called "grapes" in which I was trying to preserve the anonymity of someone from my church while also describing an extremely annoying habit of hers. Probably a good call to keep that one in drafts, past self. There's also "Chicken Little, Evangelist" and "Time Does Fly," the accuracy of which observation is confirmed by the fact that the draft is now four years old.

The posts I am most likely to abandon or take down are the ones in which I worry about exposing somebody else's underbelly. There's a post about a 2013 rough patch in our marriage, for instance. It will never appear on the blog, but here is a bit of painfully acquired wisdom from the end of it:

I've been thinking that maybe marriage helps you prepare for heaven in two ways. The first is that you see your own flaws more clearly through the eyes of your spouse. You see the damage those flaws can do, etched on the face of the person you love most. And this is the second: you see up close the crazy miraculous heartbreaking impossible truth, that you are loved anyway.

March 15, 2018

I have a weird teaching schedule this semester. One of my colleagues had a baby at the end of last month, and so she was squishing her teaching responsibilities into the first half of the semester. I picked up where she left off for the classes we co-teach: I'll be spending five hours a week with our grad students until the end of the semester.

For January and most of February, I had a little bit of responsibility for the grad students but nothing onerous. Mostly I could focus on my undergrad class. I had some whopping service commitments and a weird feeling of urgency about my research agenda, but not much in the way of teaching responsibilities. From here on out, though, it's going to be intense.

I've taught the material for the next three weeks before. In the last chunk of the semester I'll be prepping new stuff for them. It's going to be tough.

But-- I can do this. I can do it more happily if I am eating well, sleeping well, making time for exercise and fun. I will feel much more peaceful on Monday if I get a boatload of grading done tomorrow. So this is me, saying that tomorrow I'm going to do a boatload of grading. And then next week? It will be time to bring the A game.

March 14, 2018

That's not the post title you want to see in March, I know, but it is true. Lands' End was running a big sale today, in which outerwear that had already been discounted because it was mid-March was further discounted for Pi Day. I got a great deal on next winter's coats for Stella and Pete, and at the end they offered me an additional coupon code. Apparently you can click through and get 40% off any one item, and if you do then they'll send me a further 40% off code in two weeks. So if you were also thinking that you wanted to keep an eye out for coat sales, there you go.

March 13, 2018

You've probably already heard that Rex Tillerson was fired abruptly (the day after his public criticism of Russia, peculiarly) and that Mike Pompeo will be leaving the CIA to become secretary of state. Gina Haspel, the CIA's current deputy director, has been nominated to lead the agency.

There's a pocket of internet Catholicism in which "pro-life" is only supposed to mean "opposed to abortion." And oh, this frustrates me: Catholics are pro-life because we believe in the unique and unrepeatable nature of each human life, in its immense value. We are pro-life because every human life is precious in the eyes of its creator. I invite you to look back at the images from Abu Ghraib and caption them accordingly. The naked bleeding man: "redeemed by the death of Our Lord"; the person with a dog's leash around his neck: "possessed of equal dignity before God"; the prisoner sodomized with a broomstick: "loved with a profound and enduring love."

The director of the CIA must grapple with difficult questions about the optimal response toward foreign actors who have demonstrated hostility toward the US. I believe in the justice of God as firmly as I believe in his mercy. But torture does not, cannot bring justice, and its use by American authorities is a foul stain on our history. Gina Haspel's history should disqualify her from taking the reins at the CIA. Tell your senators to vote against her confirmation.

March 12, 2018

My 12yo is sitting at the dining room table on the very edge of tears. He's been working on math since he got home from Scouts. First Elwood was helping him; now I'm walking him through the last few problems. I just learned that this isn't a homework set: his teacher wanted them to complete all of these practice problems so they would be ready for a standardized test tomorrow. He didn't happen to mention whether they'd be graded or not.

"Please don't email him," said Pete, inching closer to tears. But I'm telling you: this guy deserves an email. Too much homework for any weeknight, too many disparate half-forgotten topics cram-jammed into one assignment, and too little clarity about his expectations, so that kids are left thinking, "If I bail, I might fail."

"Have you ever had trouble because of an email I've written?" I asked him, surprised. (I write very few unhappy emails to teachers; this would be the second for Pete in his eight years of school.) "No," he said, his voice wobbly. "But please don't."

"Some boats need rocking," I told him, but I also told him that for tonight I would write a crabby blog post instead. Some boats need rocking, I tell you.

March 10, 2018

I was scheduled as a Eucharistic minister this afternoon, and for some reason my side of the church was moving much more slowly through the line. To speed things up, two additional ministers came over from the other side of the church after they were done; still it took a long time. Not many people wanted to receive from the chalice, so there was a fair amount of the Precious Blood remaining as I turned back to the altar. Mindful that the priest was most of the way through his post-communion tasks because of that weirdly lopsided line, I attempted to consume the rest of it efficiently...

...and oh, you guys, I sent a big splash of it down the wrong pipe.

I was so distressed. If I'd been at home I would have made a big eye-watering noisy-coughing fuss, because it was wretchedly uncomfortable. Instead I just wheezed quietly as I folded the purificator. My pal Sylvia, who has an answer for everything, was also there in the sanctuary and I found her presence reassuring. "I'm sure Sylvia knows what to do if a Eucharistic minister passes out," I said to myself, still wheezing.

Back in my pew I was able to cough discreetly until I felt better. It occurred to me there that a person who inspires (in the "breathes in" sense) the Word at least has a fun title for the blog post she will write later about her painful Mass experience. "Oh, Sylvia," I told her afterward, "I have Jesus in my lungs." "Well, I'm sure he's doing good work in there," she said calmly. (All the non-Catholics reading this post are like "...You Catholics are a weird bunch.")

Sometimes at church we sing the song that goes, "This is the air I breathe-- your holy presence."

March 09, 2018

I loved the Murry family as a kid, and I am feeling alternately cautious and hopeful about seeing them on the big screen. It's not that I wanted the production team to hew closely to the original in the details. When I was a kid I loved that Mrs. Murry was a redhead, an un-beautiful kid who became a beautiful adult -- a scientist and a mom of many. I hope that girls from minority backgrounds who watch this new version also see something to hope for.

The thing that troubles me is this: Hollywood does goodness badly. Remember Prince Caspian? I'm still grumpy about the movie version of Prince Caspian. Remember Galadriel? I can't even with the movie version of Galadriel. And goodness is at the very heart of Wrinkle in Time. The core truth of the book is that humanity lives under a shadow, but the shadow can be overcome. I don't expect them to put Jesus front and center as Chief Shadow-Piercer, the way that L'Engle did, but I'm hoping to hear something like her litany of names -- people who strove for wisdom and goodness across the centuries.

I will be so bummed if the darkness turns into something to flirt with, something maybe not that bad. I guess it's hard to make a giant pulsing brain attractive. I hope so. (I typed that sentence assuming everybody and her hamster had read Wrinkle in Time, but maybe I should hide the potentially spoiler-y bit. Just highlight it with your mouse if you want to read it.)

I'm intrigued by the special effects possibilities, which could be fun to see on the big screen. And I suppose we're living in the right era for a movie about pushing back against conformity. It's not just a book about doing your own thing, though; it's a book about how you -- yes, you -- are uniquely able to fight against evil in the place where you happen to find yourself. Maybe because you love words, maybe because you love math, maybe because you have been put together as a formidably tenacious person -- but really because you have been put together in a way that equips you to love the people around you like nobody else can love them.

Will that come through loud and clear in the movie? I'm worried that it won't.